This means materials can be selected on their environmental merits.
The drivers for change in this arena need themselves to change, in reality and in dialogue.. With tough and uncertain trading conditions, drivers which do not put economics at the centre of things, risk becoming marginalised.The aims of efficiency, intensification, recycling and waste reduction, if applied correctly, are directly shared with improving today’s economics.
In an arena where regulation and taxation will be aligned to carbon reduction, there is also a strategic necessity for long-term profitability.Framing the drivers in this way would chime much more favourably with shareholders, boardrooms, and in the political arena.. Economics are certainly the key driver in the generics manufacturers who operate in price-sensitive markets.Accounting for as high as 90% of prescription drugs, their strategies and business decisions have huge influence on the impact of the sector.
They often do not carry the overhead of strategic teams, and there is an opportunity to share, promote and assist their move towards more efficient use of solvents through the sharing of insights and examples.The influence of the R&D led industry is hugely significant, providing the worked through case-studies and directly influencing their supply chain, including contract manufacturers.. Over the course of the discussion, there was a radical switch in the reflections on regulations and regulators.
At the outset, regulators were seen as one of the significant barriers to moving forward at speed.
There was some evidence for this as changing a drug registration can take three years and has a significant cost attached to it.The charts below show the total accumulated carbon emissions and the detailed 60-year projection of the three cases.
Looking at the total emissions after 60 years, light refurbishment is the most advantageous adaptive reuse option (26% less carbon than new construction), followed by a full refurbishment (23% better than new construction).A red dotted line in the graphs below identifies the potential additional embodied carbon reduction from materials due to the decarbonisation of the grid.
The quantum of the reduction from the decarbonisation of materials would be highly dependent on where they are produced and the characteristics of the grid in those countries..The 60-year projection charts clearly show that the new construction option would have a much higher impact on the first year of use, due to the embodied carbon of construction using new materials.
(Editor: Elegant Gaming)